The Austrian left the train just before they reached the
six-and-a-half-mile Arlberg Tunnel and, when they returned to daylight
after twenty minutes, Stainton asked his wife:
"Didn't that fellow remind you of von Klausen?"
Muriel moved uneasily. Von Klausen's name had not been mentioned more
than twice between them since they had left the _Friedrich Barbarossa_.
"Why, no," she answered.
"I thought they spoke alike, Muriel."
"Did you? As I remember the Captain, his English was better."
Stainton reflected.
"Perhaps it was," he admitted. "But, by the way, your Austrian seemed
rather to neglect us in Paris."
"_My_ Austrian? Why mine?"
"By right of discovery. You discovered him, didn't you?"
"You mean that he discovered me. I don't like Captain von Klausen."
He attempted to argue against her prejudice, and they came near to
quarrelling. In the end, Muriel protested with tears that she hated all
Austrians and all Austria, and that they must move on to Italy at once.
Stainton obtained only a day's respite in Innsbruck. They drove to the
Triumphal Gate at the extremity of the Maria-Theresien-Strasse and then
across to the scene of the Tyrolese battles at Berg Isel, returning by
way of the Stadthaus Platz, where the band was playing in the pale
spring sunshine and where, in roles of gallants to the fashionable
ladies of the city, strolled, in uniforms of grey, of green, and of
light blue, scores of dapper, slim-waisted Austrian officers. But Muriel
said that the women were dowdy and their escorts effeminate; she
scorned the "Golden Roof" because the gilt was disappearing and the
copper showing through; she pronounced the Old Town, with its mediaeval
roofed-streets, unwholesome; she would not stop for beer at the Goldene
Adler, where Hofer drank. That worn and tarnished Hofkirche, "the
Westminster of the Tyrol," with its grotesque statues and its empty tomb
of Maximilian, she dismissed as "a dirty barn."
Muriel was cold; she said that she wanted to find warm weather. Stainton
was tired; he said that he wanted to find a place where they could loaf.
So they left for Verona, feeling certain that they would there secure
these things--and "sunny Italy" welcomed them with a snowstorm.
Muriel was again in tears.
"It's no use," she sobbed; "we can't get what we want anywhere."
"Of course we can," sighed Stainton, "and the snowstorm will clear.
Cheer up, dear; we've only to look hard enough or wait a bit."
"But I'm tired of looking and waiting--we've been doing that ever since
we went away. Let's go back to Paris."
Back to Paris! She had taken him on this nerve-destroying journey; she
had headed for this place and swerved to that; she had exhausted them
both by her unaccountable whims and her switching resolutions--and now
she wanted to go back to Paris!
"You said that Paris didn't agree with you, dear," pleaded Stainton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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